The Democratic Leadership Council
sent an important sign about gun politics recently, unveiling a new
article "Changing
the Gun Debate. " The revealing piece is written by Jonathan Cowan and
Jim Kessler, president and policy director, respectively, of Americans for
Gun Safety. AGS is the creation of billionaire Andrew McKelvey, who
briefly served on the board of Sarah Brady's Handgun Control, Inc., then
quit because the organization was making so little progress.

Their message is the need to develop a new perspective on the gun debate
if the gun-control lobby and the Democratic party are going to make any
further advances. Cowan and Kessler are to be commended for speaking
plainly to Democrats about gun control. They point out the futility of
trying to influence gun-owning voters by insulting them and acting as if
owning a gun makes one a sociopath. This November's elections demonstrated
that Rosie O'Donnell-style hate-mongering frightens many more voters than
it encourages.

Yet
AGS quickly returns to the politics of false demonization. Cowan and
Kessler assert that the NRA stands for "no restrictions on the sale,
manufacture, or possession of firearms." This is nonsense. It was the NRA
that successfully pushed for the National Instant Check System for gun
buyers as an alternative to the seven-day waiting period pushed by Handgun
Control, Inc. When some NRA Board members objected to the NRA supporting
gun control, Wayne LaPierre (chief operating officer of the NRA) and Jim
Baker (chief lobbyist) threatened to quit if the NRA backed away from
instant background checks.

It
is also the NRA, under LaPierre and Baker's tenure, that has successfully
pushed for concealed handgun licensing laws, which are now on the
books in 33 states. These laws set up a fair, uniform, licensing
procedure, including a background check, for law-abiding adults who wish
to carry a firearm for lawful protection.

The
NRA's promotion of background checks and licensing has earned it the wrath
of Gun Owners of
America, which accurately promotes itself as "The only no-compromise
gun lobby in Washington" — in pointed contrast with the National Rifle
Association. Anybody who's followed gun control politics for more than a
few weeks knows about the NRA/GOA fight.

Cowan and Kessler then complain that the "NRA spent tens of millions of
dollars in the last election to persuade gun-owning union households that
a Gore administration would take away their guns. Although unions fought
hard to persuade their members to vote their union and not their gun, the
NRA's bogus scare tactic had an impact."

Well, the most visible signs of the NRA's "bogus" campaign were billboards
containing the text of a letter from Clinton/Gore Solicitor General Seth
Waxman claiming that the Second Amendment guaranteed no individual rights
and that the federal government could take away everyone's guns, if it
wanted to. After a shooting at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., Gore
said that he favored banning self-loading handguns, which constitute over
half of all handguns. Gore ran television ads touting his tie-breaking
1999 Senate vote in favor of the Lautenberg Amendment on gun shows. Yet
Cowan and Kessler themselves denounce the Lautenberg Amendment because it
treated "hobbyists who attend these shows like dangerous social misfits."

So
Gore's administration says there's no right to own a gun; Gore endorses
banning most handguns; and Gore applauds himself for his decisive vote in
favor of treating gun hobbyists like dangerous social misfits. And yet
Cowan and Kessler claim that the NRA is guilty of n "bogus scare" tactics
for warning gun owners about Al Gore?

After echoing the absurd anti-NRA propaganda lines of the gun prohibition
lobbies, Cowan and Kessler announce that Democrats and "gun safety"
advocates "need to make gun owners partners in developing policies that
help keep guns out of the hands of criminals and make guns safer in the
home." They also call for Americans to "embrace a 'third way' gun policy
that treats gun ownership as neither an absolute right nor an absolute
wrong ."

First of all, the "third way" that Cowan and Kessler advocate happens to
be what the NRA has been promoting all along. The gun activists who want
an "absolute right" have long ago defected to Gun Owners of America.

Cowan and Kessler extensively tout their proposal for imposing special
restrictions on firearms sales at gun shows, and falsely claim that there
is a "gun show loophole." To the contrary, current federal law applies the
same no matter where a gun sale takes place. If the sale is by someone
"engaged in the business," then the seller needs to have a Federal
Firearms License, and every sale needs permission from the FBI--including
sales at gun shows.

If
on the other hand, the seller is not "engaged in the business" (e.g., a
collector selling a couple guns in order to pay for the family's summer
vacation), then the federal restrictions on dealers are not applicable.
Whether he sells the two guns to a friend at work, to a neighbor, through
the classified ads, or at a gun show, the law is the same.

Whatever the merits of making the collector's occasional sales at a gun
show subject to special restrictions not applicable elsewhere, to claim
that these special restrictions are "closing a loophole" is Orwellian. The
majority of the American public may be misinformed about the existence of
a "gun show loophole" — but gun-rights activists (the folks who delivered
five states and thus the Presidency to George Bush last November)
certainly are not. If Cowan, Kessler, AGS, and the DLC are serious about
defusing opposition from gun rights activists, a good first step would be
to stop mischaracterizing existing gun laws.

And
if Americans for Gun Safety actually believes its public rhetoric about
supporting the right of law-abiding citizens to own guns, then how about
supporting repeal of the handgun prohibition laws in Chicago and
District of Columbia? In fact, AGS was recently asked about supporting
repeal of gun-prohibition laws — which would seem to be a rather easy idea
for people who genuinely support a "third way" between the gun-prohibition
lobbies and the NRA. AGS refused.

What Cowan and Kessler are really advocating is not a genuine "third way,"
but rather classic Clintonian sleight-of-hand. They pay lip service to the
"rights" of gun owners--but they won't even go so far as to state that the
Second Amendment guarantees any rights. Presumably, the hope is to fool
some poorly informed gun owners into believing that their rights are safe
while the antigun lobby pushes gun control a bit farther down the slippery
slope.

Mr.
Cowan, by the way, is former chief of staff to former HUD Secretary Andrew
Cuomo. This makes him the right-hand man of the most antigun Cabinet
member of the most antigun administration in American history. As Cuomo's
chief of staff, Cowan was hip-deep in working with the hard core of the
antigun lobby (the very folks he claims to be distant from, today) to
threaten abusive government lawsuits against American gun manufacturers.
Would a genuinely moderate, third-way group make someone with Cowan's
background its president?

As
one might expect from an article written by a former Clinton official,
much of the article is devoted to an analysis of polls, feelings,
political maneuver and clever use of labels like "gun safety" instead of
"gun control." Although the authors point out that some people believe the
Second Amendment confirms an individual right, they are careful not to
agree or disagree.

Reading between the lines, it seems that Cowan and Kessler are simply
telling the antigun enthusiasts of the Democratic party to control their
emotions, to muzzle the counter-productive hate speech, to impose control
by salami tactics, and to stop harming their cause by grabbing for more
than they have the political force to take.

There really are some Democrats who usually support gun control, but who
sincerely believe in at least some Second Amendment rights. Wisconsin
senator Russ Feingold is one of them. But if the DLC wants voters to
believe that there's really a New Democrat vision on gun control, the DLC
ought to publish someone who affirms the Second Amendment and who stands
against gun prohibition — rather than an old-fashioned Clinton official
who's discovered Fabian tactics.

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